Snake versus possum in Boxing Day showdown

The possum was alive even with its head inside a two-metre python, Adrian Brand realised. When he reached out to touch the marsupial, its tail wrapped around his finger.

Mr Brand witnessed the conspicuous consumption in a city gutter while cycling in Brisbane about 9.30am on Boxing Day. He stopped to see what bystanders were looking at on Gladstone Road and filmed the tussle on his phone.

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Snake makes lunch out of possum

Video taken by a Brisbane cyclist shows a two-metre long python engulfing a possum for its Boxing Day lunch.

The video - now seen more than 59,000 times on YouTube - shows what appears to be a spotted python repositioning itself ahead of a long lunch. "My guess is the possum fell out of the tree," Mr Brand said. "It would have been asleep and ambushed by the python. It was being constricted to death."

Passerby Adrian Brand said the possum was still alive as it was being eaten. Photo: Adrian Brand

The feast was moveable, a cyclist demonstrated after he decided it should be moved off the road. He picked the possum up by the tail, the snake still coiled tightly around it, and carted the pair away to a nearby garden.

"I would've happily stood there to watch the whole thing," Mr Brand said. Born in Brisbane, he said he had never seen anything like it before.